Lovetrue

Lovetrue |

Director: Alma Har’el

Country: USA

Year: 2016

Length: 82'

Language: In English

Introduction by Kaarel Kuurmaa.

The highly anticipated sophomore effort from an Israeli director who has returned five years after her successful debut, "Bombay Beach", to uncover the essence of the universal emotion of love. A documentary essay interweaving three true life stories and exposing naïve notions of the existence of a “true” love that is free of pain.

Israeli director Alma Har’el, whose feature documentary debut "Bombay Beach" was a great success, has returned after five years with her long-awaited second effort: a cinematic essay exposing naïve notions of the existence of something as ephemeral as “true” love that is free of pain.

Three protagonists guide us through their personal stories: the Alaskan stripper Blake, the Hawaiian-raised freethinker Willie, and a New Yorker named Victory, who sings about her sorrow. The unconventional form combines authentic material from the protagonists’ daily lives, stylized scenes probing their frequently grim pasts, and additional sequences seeking possible future trajectories for each of them.

The film, which may seem too headstrong from a “rational” viewer’s perspective, uses the sharp turns of a fixed emotional course to uncover the essence of something as universal as love, whose subtle nuances surface under the hypnotic soundtrack by the American musician Flying Lotus.